Office of the Historian

Hopkins Papers: Telegram

The President to the Chief of Staff, United States Army (Marshall)1

secret
operational priority
[Washington,] May 31, 1943.

For General Marshall from the President. Urgent and secret. Despatch for Stalin approved with following amendment: strike out under b following words, “n priority”,2 and include a and b as one priority. In order to protect security suggest you wire Stalin telling him you are sending courier by air to deliver message to him in Moscow or his agent at some convenient3 place.4 You may state that your message has my approval as well as Churchill’s.

Roosevelt
  1. Presumably transmitted via military channels to Marshall, then at Algiers.↩
  2. In Roosevelt’s handwritten draft of this telegram, the quoted phrase appears as “next in priority”.↩
  3. In Roosevelt’s handwritten draft of this telegram, the word “appropriate” is used rather than “convenient”.↩

  4. The procedure recommended in this telegram for informing Stalin of the results of the conference in Washington was superseded by the procedure set forth in Roosevelt’s telegram of June 2, 1943, to Stalin, infra. Roosevelt explained the change in the following telegram of June 2, 1943, to Marshall:

    “Please inform Prime Minister Churchill that the message containing decisions of Combined Chiefs of Staff has been sent to Stalin together with suggested covering note of transmittal in code through the American Ambassador in Moscow but with reluctance because of the ever present danger of the code’s being broken.” (Roosevelt Papers)

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